MULTIMEDIA

Brooklyn's Backyard Drag Queen

NARRATIVE.LY

Anna Maria Hernandez

For a man who appears onstage several times a week dressed like a woman who stuck her finger into an electrical socket after getting bitten by a zombie, Matthew Mendoza is shy. His voice is a whisper. This is surprising because Mendoza—known to his friends as Matty and to a fan base that inhabits dozens of bars, performance halls and coffee shops across a swath of fashionably shabby Brooklyn neighborhoods as Matt.com, Matty Beats and Horrorchata—is currently the most popular hairy, tattooed, horror-movie-character-turned-drag-queen in New York.